Extremist Christians are selecting One Nation as their vehicle. Our rights are on the line.
Australia has long maintained separation of church and state, with no established religion. In that context, progressives sense that coercive Christian politics are not a threat here. Question that.
Australians are likely to disregard the threat of Christian extremism becoming politically powerful. Now with billionaire backing, and a political party to ride, they could be more risky than we imagine.
Trump was elected twice, in substantial part because of his White Evangelical base of support. Sinner Trump clearly did not care about abortion but granting Evangelicals and reactionary Catholics control of the Supreme Court has had dramatic manifestations, including the axing of protection for access to reproductive healthcare.
The US had “developing nation” ranking on risk for mothers and babies before the Supreme Court acted. Now the approximately 70% of Americans who have supported access to some form of abortion are subject to the dictates of the minority and the repercussions for their health.
States embracing their “freedom” to oppress those of childbearing age are preventing the reporting of death and injury statistics. Miscarriages are becoming more dangerous, and a Tennessee Republican is suggesting that women should be executed for having a miscarriage medically completed. These states that claim to be “pro life” have a growing incidence of maternity care deserts, infant and maternal mortality. There is much more at risk than just access to abortion when the Christian Right wins on reproductive healthcare.
Trump and his counterterrorism official have characterised being critical of Christianity as evidence of terrorist activity in recent pronouncements.
Countries can change very quickly, particularly when there is a coordinated and well-funded propaganda campaign to put minoritarian coalitions in government. There they can begin legislating against the majority’s beliefs and wellbeing. Australia is better protected by our electoral system but in our era of information chaos, we cannot trust in that alone to protect us.
At the 9th Church and State conference next week in Brisbane, Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts will be representing One Nation in a dedicated panel. (Note that Roberts has long term international connections in orchestrated climate disinformation.) Church and State is a theocratic organisation founded by David Pellowe to make Australian politics (fringe) “Christian.” Pellowe “appeared in an infamous selfie with members of the neo-fascist Proud Boys group.”
In that report on the 2021 conference, Michael Koziol at Fairfax explained that anti-trans activity was to be the road into politics for the “Christian” theocrats. There were deep Christian links and dedicated Christian propaganda integrated into the 2023 “No” campaign fighting the First Peoples’ consultative body, the Voice to Parliament. In 2026, the theocrats believe they can use abortion as well: it is apparently no longer a live rail in Australian civic debate.
One Nation has a series of debunked commitments to rolling back access to abortion. Anti-abortion politicians are moving to One Nation, including Catholics Barnaby Joyce, Cory Bernardi and, most extreme, Bernie Finn. The party has been supported by anti-abortion influencer Joanna Howe. Now One Nation has been positioned as the final panel at the Church and State conference, apparently endorsing it as the political path to power for extremist political Christianity.
The incremental campaign against access to abortion is being undertaken by several forces within Australian civic space at the moment. Note that the anti abortion legislation in the NSW parliament was proposed by a Libertarian Party (Atlas Network offshoot) member. One Nation’s Joyce spoke for it at a rally. These are not separate forces but an interconnected operation.
Every piece of (so far) defeated legislation and court case gives this coalition another chance to beat up myths about the nature of abortion, or demonise the universal existence of Queer people as “abnormal.”
Note Emeritus Professor John Warhurst’s recent survey of reactionary Catholics in powerful positions in Australia. (And watch Labor.) It is not just Evangelicals and Pentecostals who are working to impose their minority morality on Australian legislatures. This cooperation is called co-belligerence.
In the 2021 Census, Australians confessed at the rate of 43.9% to belonging to Christian faith in some form. In second place was 38.9% opting for “no religion.” In the 2026 census, the Census No Religion group is working to encourage cultural Christians (or others) to declare themselves as not religious to better reflect (and protect) our increasingly secular society.
Far fewer than that percentage attend Church or religious services regularly, let alone weekly. Some proportion of that number is committed to personal morality and spirituality. I support their form of religiosity; I am not critical of them here.
So the percentage that defines “religious liberty” as the freedom to impose their own fringe morality as state mandate is small but potentially significant.
It is vital to note that their vote is boosted by an electoral bloc in formation. The far right is coding itself as “Christian” and/or (Christian) Zionist. There is a faction of voters for whom calling themselves (Judeo)Christian is becoming an identitarian act. It can mean White and/or Western.
It gives their bigotries heft by coding them as dictated by God.
The far right men loathe “feminists,” and resent women’s rights in the civic space including voting. Apparently saving “Western Civilisation” depends on putting women, crippled by “toxic empathy,” in their rightful domestic sphere. Attacking abortion becomes saintly instead of merely misogynist if it is defined as God-ordered. As a bonus, enforced breeding can be women’s contribution to the repopulating of “The West.”
Denying the existence of LGBTQIA+ people becomes a blessed battle against sin (and “race suicide”) rather than the abuse of human rights it is.
Part of the decades of work to demonise Muslims has focused on making it acceptable to express bigotry by culture. We are chided if we call the Islamophobes “racists.” This sleight of hand is the mechanism by which genocide continues to be aided by Western governments and media: Palestinians are coded as Muslim not Brown. That, by this logic, makes them fair targets. It is “moral cowardice” to allow Muslims and non-White people to live in “the West” or to argue against their slaughter.
First People’s culture is destroyed as pagan. The only way for Indigenous people to be tolerated is to submerge themselves completely in this far right coloniser identity.
From the Church and State conference founder’s series of posts at the Daily Declaration. The Atlas partner IPA defended Pellowe’s “freedom of speech.”
The Trump regime’s escalating destruction of the scientific establishment is a reflection of a far right politics that finds facts inconvenient. The myths of faith must be given superior weight. This alone makes the movement attractive to destructive industries, without need to consider their owners’ or CEOs’ personal ideology.
Church and State 2026: who’s who
Two years ago, the Church and State conference was unified with the (now dormant?) Atlas Network regional conference. Last year, they’d divorced and it bore the title "Pulpits Aflame.”
Liberals Tony Abbott and Alex Antic were programmed to attend in 2025, and Nationals Matt Canavan was a speaker. The political affiliation has switched to One Nation in 2026. The new lineup is worth noting.
The first panel this year is on Islam which should indicate the priority given to building false “Clash of Civilisations” narratives. That is followed by Social Reformation (including reforming politics), Biblical Patriarchy, followed by a Worship and Gospel Rally. The second day begins with Abortion, followed by Politics is Changing and concludes with that session promoting One Nation.
The Politics is Changing panel features: Dave Pellowe, Barclay McGain, John Steenhof and Lyle Shelton. Pellowe is the founder of the Church and State organisation. Shelton leads the extremist Australian Christian Lobby which started the legal entity Human Rights Law Alliance replicating the US “hate group,” the Alliance Defending Freedom. Steenhof represents that legal body which aims to strip rights through legal activity.
Barclay McGain is the scandal-plagued* student Young LNP member who now serves as CPAC Australia’s General Manager. Working for that Atlas Network offshoot caps many Atlas Network affiliations: McGain appeared to be trying to establish a US Atlas partner Students for Liberty in Brisbane in 2020. He progressed to the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, the (DC-based) Americans for Tax Reform, then Campus Coordinator for the Institute of Public Affairs. All Atlas partners. McGain is not the only “controversial” Young Liberal to be given a career in Atlas-linked outfits in recent years. Maybe pickings are slim. (See the CPAC Aus Global Explorers sent to network with MAGA in the US in the footnote.)
McGain appears to have become politically “Christian.” He was alleged in The Australian to be staging an anti-choice “wholesale capture” of the Queensland LNP through stacking the youth wing with extremist Christian figures. He aims to gain the number of seats eventually to overturn the “Termination of Pregnancy Act.”
On the panel on Islam, the speakers include Bishop Ceirion Dewar from Britain. He belongs to a UK breakaway church and speaks at rallies for incendiary thug “Tommy Robinson.” Note Advance (the propaganda arm of this coalition) importing international Islamophobes for their conference.
Another is Dr Richard Shumack, Australian “specialist” on Islam who appears on John Anderson’s “national conservative” YouTube channel fearmongering about Muslims as if they are all extremists. He strips historical context to make Islam look incompatible with the West and democracy. Rev Mark Leach is the preacher who has given himself over to fighting for Israel.
The panel on abortion features: Lola Popoola who is one of Joanna Howe’s anti-abortion acolytes. This young lawyer is one of 7 “girls” who want to “flip the script” on “abortion as pro woman” through BirdFlip, targeting young women. Matthew Cliff represents Queensland’s “Cherish Life.” Louise Adsett is an Australian Christian Lobby-connected midwife who is used on the Christian speaking circuit to fearmonger that “babies” are born alive and left to die. Such gambits have been effective at mobilising support in the US.
From Tory Shepherd’s reporting at The Guardian.
The other speakers are mainly assorted preachers, with the exception of an ex-prankster youth content creator who now makes Christian content and is thus qualified to pontificate on Biblical Patriarchy.
To understand how toxic such Evangelical/Pentecostal Christianity can be, follow Australian Clare McIvor and American Monte Mader.
Qld MP Robbie Katter is back to speak about reforming politics for Christians.
Australia’s power players are backing this trajectory
Directed at the power elite class, Murdoch’s The Australian is consistently streaming (Judeo)Christian faith and identity messaging.
Gina Rinehart, mining magnate and MAGA zealot, donated to controversial extremist Catholic Campion College, with a library named after her there. Pauline Hanson and One Nation were recently described by Australia’s Treasurer as a “wholly owned subsidiary” of Rinehart.
Rinehart is shown here networking with the Moms for America group which is supported by some of the key dark money donors that back the Atlas Network’s partners. She is promoted attacking her West Australian private school by Vision Christian Media which partners with the Australian Christian Lobby. For example here, Vision promotes the ACL CEO listing its achievements in civil society in 2023. Vision’s story reveals it as an offshoot of United Christian Broadcasters, begun in New Zealand/Aotearoa and now in 25 countries.
Christian media was pivotal to making the MAGA base. In the internet era, social media messaging is likely becoming much more important. A second part of this report will look at the American training underway for Australia’s content creator class on the far right.
Christian extremists believe they have a path to imposing their fringe morality on the majority through captive government. We cannot afford to trust in the past evidence that they cannot.
More on McGain:
McGain was one of 2025’s CPAC Aus “Global Explorers” funded by Libertarian Party donor Steve Baxter to attend the US conference to network. Read this disturbing account of the 2025 trip. Christian activists Joel Jammal and Edward Schuller are with him here. Christian influencer Freya Leach, daughter of the pastor mentioned above, was one of three political Christians listed amongst the mainly Liberal Party-connected youth in this year’s cohort.
From the Daily Mail about Kevin Rudd. McGain was posting after attending Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.
From Daanyal Sayeed and Charlie Lewis in Crikey April 17 2025. Note that the Liberal Party was cautious to be associated with this character, but Atlas partners embrace him.
This is McGain supported by the controversial white ethnostate lecturer at Campion.
This is deeply concerning and the presence of the US Judeo/Christian right in the politics of a country with a wildly different demographic of religious belief to that of the US is also worrying. While many people I know would absolutely identify as Christian, they also would not identify with the Christian fundamentalist ideas of America. We all really need to make sure we’re engaged and aware of who the smaller parties are in the next election or Australia could quickly become governed by an extreme ideological minority. That never goes well, as history has shown many times before…
More ‘Christianism’? See UK, like Farage's Reform and the further far right Restore* of Lowe, the former is constantly platformed with soft interviews, sound bites etc. by UK RW MSM and ecosystem vs pummeling the centre ie. PM Starmer.
*US neo-Nazi, had visited/presented in Oz, friend of late John Tanton, Brimelow et al and muse of Bannon (who wooed Farage), Jared Taylor visited UK late ‘25 (although banned?) and has joined Restore; promoting white Christian nationalism and ‘race realism’.
Like Tea Party, Brexit and the Voice No campaign it's about creating a ‘vibe’ in RW MSM and social media to mislead and rev up middle-aged+ skips in regions who dominate, while ON and RW MSM are tracking a demographic in decline?
Using frequent headline polls to keep ON PR going, but it's not based on reality or mainstream Christianity?
Leadership or approval polling with little ‘digging down’ and campaigns for referendums, by-elections or FPTP (first past the post voting) are more straightforward than matching to a preferential voting system locally?
Ditto US Evangelical Christian culture (in fact declining in the US) does not fit more secular Oz and UK, nor increasingly fewer voters as ‘the great replacement’ starts’? Farrer for ON was dominated by the burgeoning 70+ years of age skip cohort.